It was a headline-grabbing moment: two NBA players–one a genuine star–reportedly pulling guns on each other in a locker-room confrontation. What really happened between the Washington Wizards’ Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton? Shooting Guards, the latest installment in Netflix’s UNTOLD series of sports documentaries, digs in to find out.
The Gist: The hook here is the famous locker room standoff, but UNTOLD: Shooting Guards takes its time getting there, focusing first on establishing the career trajectories of Arenas and Crittenton. A number of figures from their basketball lives appear to give context, but the primary story is told by Arenas and Crittenton themselves. (Separately, of course.)
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Netflix has established a familiar format with its UNTOLD series of standalone sports documentaries, an echo of ESPN’s long-running 30 For 30 format. Now in its fifth set of installments, there’s a few UNTOLD docs that touch on similarly-sensitive topics, including UNTOLD: Malice at the Palace–for basketball drama–and UNTOLD: The Murder of Air McNair for true-crime.
Performance Worth Watching: The core of UNTOLD: Shooting Guards is the first-hand accounts from Arenas and Crittenton, but a moment of revelation comes from Crittenton’s former teammate Nick Young. Young recalls a moment when–shortly after getting jumped outside a club–Crittenton starts hanging out with members of a Los Angeles branch of the Crips street gang. “Being in LA, being part of a gang… they take that serious,” Young recalls. “You can’t go back from that.”
Memorable Dialogue: “If I had to do it over again, would I?”, Arenas asks himself–specifically reflecting on a brash moment prior to the 2001 NBA Draft that may have severely impacted his draft position, but maybe also revealing a larger ethos for his mercurial career–“yeah, I would.”
Sex and Skin: None. (It’s not good for young viewers, though, for obvious reasons.)
Our Take: On Christmas Eve 2009, the Washington Wizards’ Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton pulled guns on each other in a locker-room argument related to gambling debts. It was a big sports-world story at the time, especially given the NBA’s desire to project a softer, friendlier image in the wake of the 2004 “Malice at the Palace” brawl. The incident resulted in season-long suspensions for both Arenas and for role player Crittenton, and marked the end of the latter’s NBA career.
Is it actually worthy of a full documentary, though? That’s the reaction that I first had when I saw the lineup for this season of UNTOLD, Netflix’s imprint for standalone sports documentaries. Admitting that Shooting Guards is a terrific title for an installment addressing the incident, I was skeptical that it was story enough for a full retelling.
To my pleasant surprise, Shooting Guards makes the story compelling. It succeeds by taking its time, and by framing the story as a nearly-tragic clash of personalities between its two central figures.
Arenas is the more-recognizable of the two names in the story–a three-time NBA All-Star, then-face of the Washington franchise, and a worthy foil to a young LeBron James in multiple playoff clashes. In the mid-aughts, “Agent Zero” was one of the league’s more-marketable figures, a smiling, happy-go-lucky jokester on and off the court. “There’s this line between being a prankster and going too far,” Arenas recalls, “and I was always on that line.” We learn about his upbringing in southern California, an upbringing that he admits was relatively comfortable despite being raised by a single father.
He stands in contrast to the moody Crittenton, whose rise from Atlanta-area high school prospect to Georgia Tech star to Los Angeles Lakers benchwarmer always seemed to be shadowed by anger and unease.
Their paths intersected on the 2009 Wizards, when an argument broke out relating to a high-stakes card game on the team plane. “Every part of the NBA is testing your manhood,” Arenas notes about the level of gambling that would take place during such trips. Crittenton questioned Arenas, who gleefully prodded the younger player. “What I was doing purposely to irritate Javaris–that’s what I do,” Arenas recalls. Their jawing escalated to talk of guns, and boasts of bringing them to the locker room before their next practice.
Arenas showed up with guns–something he still claims was a joke. Crittenton showed up with a gun, claiming he planned to defend himself. “Ain’t no point in carrying a gun with no bullets in it,” Crittenton recalls. A brief altercation ensued, but defused before it could go too far.
“That was really the end of it. Well, we thought,” Arena recalls.
NBA reporter Peter Vecsey broke the story a few days later, and two careers were irrevocably altered. Arenas’ image took a hit, but he returned to the NBA; Crittenton never did, and went down a much darker path–one that led to bloodshed and a long stint in prison.
That’s a dry plot summary, but Shooting Guards crafts it into a compelling narrative, a story of two basketball careers–one that made it, and one that didn’t.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The incident itself might not seem worthy of a documentary treatment on its own, but UNTOLD: Shooting Guards does a deft job using that incident to tell the story of two basketball lives, and how easily a dream can go wrong.
Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.
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